Monthly Archives: January 2016

You have probably noticed that my posts have become more sporadic lately.

Oh, man! I have seen those words on so many blogs, usually right before the blogger announces their newest book! 😀

No, I’m not announcing my newest book. Yet. But I’m working on it. And I’m announcing that I’m working on it. I have deadlines and everything. Oh, gods! What have I done?

What it comes down to is that I am still writing, pretty much every day. I have to finish 20K words by summer. For people who have done NaNoWriMo (50,000 words in 30 days), that might not sound like much—and for people who don’t write at all, it probably doesn’t sound like anything—but it’s a lot for me. This is my first serious attempt at something salable, and it has to be finished in a timely manner, and it has to be good readable.

My rule is to write at least two sentences each day. It usually turns into more than that, but it’s a lot easier to convince myself that I have energy for two sentences than for onethousandwordsperday ohmygaaaaah!!! And some days, all I have in me is two sentences, but that’s okay, because that’s my minimum. Anyway, it works for me and keeps me progressing.

The other day I hit a block, because I don’t know how to flirt. You see, both of my characters are expert flirts and charmers, and I am not, so I didn’t know how to write their dialog. I sat on it for a day (and put two sentences in earlier paragraphs), and then I realized I should focus on how, even though this is old hat for them, they’re both out of their element, because there’s more than just physical attraction, and neither of them knows how to deal with that. So instead of dialog, I did this:

Electric. Her fingers were as chill as the bottle, and yet when he enclosed them with his much larger hand, he felt warm tingles shoot through his entire body. The world narrowed down to this moment. He saw her eyes, felt her fingers warming under his. He was smiling. He was saying something to her, and she was smiling back, flirting back. And he had no idea what either of them was talking about, but it didn’t matter, because she was here, with him.

“Come out with me tonight. Say yes.”

With a shy half-grin she looked at him through lowered lashes. “I—”

I’m not sure if it’s stronger— Well, it’s stronger than me trying to pretend to know how to flirt, but I can get advice on that later. I’m not sure if this approach is a stronger way to structure this part of the story, but that’s okay, because it allowed me to keep moving forward. It felt good to jump that hurdle, and then everything flowed again.

So, I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to update this blog for a while. I’ve got a few more days of two sentences to knock out. But rest assured that I’m still writing. Because that is what this blog is about for me– a place to make sure that as a writer, I keep writing.

Image found here.
Frédéric Soulacroix [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less. {{PD-US-no notice}} – any work first published without copyright notice prior to 1978.